Area B-1 Contest - Part Two of Two

The Area Contest

There were 6 total contestants besides myself. 3 women and 2 other men. I drew 3rd in speaking order.

The target speaker was an advanced speaker, whose speech title was "Passing the Generational Torch".

I was surprised by the quality of the speech because in the past target speeches are usually given by speakers who are still working ont their first speech manual. The reason is many of the contestants at this level are usually first-timers.

At first I had a moment of panic, as the usual standard points I include in an evaluation were no longer valid in light of the how good the target speech was. I calmed myself down by remembering the holistic guidelines I set for myself and set about organizing my presentation.

Being 3rd in order gave me the additional time to decide on how I was going to present. Following is the organization I came up with:

The presentation was of the speaker's family history, focusing on family members who lived during the Civil War. This made the history relevant and was enlivened by the speaker's sense of humor.

Because of the quality of the speaker and the speech I decided to use a theme of coaching a storyteller. What the strengths the speaker had as a storyteller, how he could make those stronger and what constructive criticism could I provide to make the story clearer.

I was surprised by how nervous I was as I began. Intellectually I knew I was rusty as it had been years since I last presented outside of my TM club, but it was still a shock emotionally.

Having my holistic guidelines and several keynote points to organize my evaluation allowed me to be spontaneius and fun. For example, I pointed out one of the speaker's strengths was coming across to the audience in an affable manner which would allow the forgiveness of a lot of sins. In the resulting audience laughter I then qualified my statement by saying the speaker didn't have that many sins to worry about.

I focused my constructive criticisms on the speaker's transitions from the opening to the body to the conclusion. I also pointed out the an item he was given by a relative which was the source of his searching his family background would have had more impact if he had actually brought the item in question to show the audience.

Another of my points was complimenting the speaker on his voice and urging him to think of it as an instrument and using its full range and use of pause to make the presentation come across as more varied.

The result was I won to advance to the Division contest in October.